The Prophet and “the Messiah”
Thursday, November 6th, 2008In the sense of foretelling the future, I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. Eli Stone can’t say that, but I can.
There have been times, though, when I have — and I know this sounds very strange — “known” what was going to happen in the future. Call it insight, call it deductive reasoning, call it a hallucination, or call it a lucky guess, but I have known. You might even call what I have known “prophecy,” but I stick with my earlier statement about neither nor the son of.
Was Minister Louis Farrakhan acting as a prophet when he called Barack Obama “the Messiah?” To be fair, his statement might have meant that Jesus (the Messiah) was speaking through Obama. The proof he offered for his outrageous statement, in either case, was that young people were listening to Obama. Young people also listen to rap music, Shrek, and Big Bird, but I digress.
My point is that I foretold Obama’s ascendancy to the Oval Office years and years ago, probably during the 1996 DNC. (I used to live in Illinois, and the boy made a splash when Carol Moseley Braun was the first African-American woman to win a senate seat and he was credited with helping her do so.) Had I been a betting man, I would have known to call Ladbroke’s and get down 10 quid on Obama to win. Then on January 21, 2009, I could have retired. Instead, I’ll be continuing to work and pay taxes, only now I’ll probably pay more of them.
Obama himself is prophecying a “changed” future. That’s pretty easy — there is a new sheriff in town, so change seems likely — but what is tough is figuring out where the change will occur. One place that might happen is within Obama himself.
In fact I’d predict that, except that I am not a prophet.